Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Emily Thornberry

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

Swansea is a fine city and the hon. Gentleman represents it very well. That may be the case in Swansea, but I can only speak about the Jobcentre Pluses that the Work and Pensions Committee investigated. We did not see any evidence of targets. In my constituency, I have two Jobcentre Pluses. They are outstanding and do a fantastic job. We have almost full employment in Weaver Vale and the surrounding area. The centres do a great job of trying to get the people who are unemployed into jobs. If hard-working taxpayers who pay for benefits and welfare did not turn up to work on time and do a good job, they would be sanctioned—they would be sacked. There has to be fairness. Finding a full-time job is a full-time job. There is the claimant commitment. All I am saying to the House is that in my experience I have not seen any target culture in the Jobcentre Pluses I have visited.

[Emily Thornberry]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Islington Law Centre in my constituency has a 100% success rate in overturning sanction decisions?

[Graham Evans]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. She makes a powerful point. She represents north London and I represent a seat in the north-west. When the Committee investigated Jobcentre Plus, one of the things I used to argue for was best practice. There are some outstanding examples of Jobcentre Plus practice. Perhaps the north London jobcentres need to look at best practice elsewhere in the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Emily Thornberry]

The point is simply this: the hon. Gentleman may be right, so will he support our call for an independent review of sanctions across the country, so we can see where there is good practice and where there is bad practice?

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Lady raises a good point, which others have raised, too. I would encourage the Select Committee to do a further investigation into Jobcentre Plus. My personal experience is that it does an outstanding job. I carry out job fairs in my constituency and I am organising my fifth one since I became an MP, during which time I have seen unemployment halved in Weaver Vale. One thing I learned from working with the jobcentres in Runcorn and Northwich was the number of high-quality and well-paid jobs available.

Let me provide an example. Waitrose came to town—to Northwich. It is under no obligation to give interviews, but when it came to Northwich, it said it would interview 25% of local people on the books of the local jobcentre. In the end, it interviewed 70%, and I am pleased to say that more than 50% of those it took on for the new Waitrose in Northwich were local people. I spoke to many of the people employed there. There were lots of young ladies, and ladies not quite so young, who had been unemployed for many years. They now have themselves a fantastic career with a John Lewis partnership. I asked them why they were unemployed for so long, and they said that the training given by Jobcentre Plus and the local Cheshire West and Chester work zone was what made them job-ready, able to do well in interviews and capable of producing a good CV.

The last time I checked, Waitrose was delighted with the quality of the workforce—one that, as I say, had been unemployed for a very long time. Some of the jobs are part time, but some people want that, and they are good-quality jobs and very well paid. This is exactly the sort of Jobcentre Plus activity that I hope goes on in everyone’s constituency. I was going to say more about Jobcentre Plus, but I shall give that a miss as I have already made the points.

Everyone with the ability to work should be given the support and opportunity to work. The previous system wrote too many people off and left too many trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency. Over the last five years, the number of people in Weaver Vale claiming jobseeker’s allowance and universal credit while not in employment fell by more than 1,000—a 51% drop. I am not saying that my jobs fairs had anything to do with that, but they probably helped in some way.

This Government’s long-term economic plan is working for Weaver Vale, getting people off a life on benefits and back into work. I have not heard of an alternative to our long-term economic plan recently—or at all, in fact. Employment has been this Government’s real success, with 2 million more jobs—and 1,000 created each and every day during the last Parliament.